This container is made by Savvy Sassy and can be found in the baby section at Target for around $5. It is BPA free, and includes two other smaller containers (not shown) which nest inside with their own tight-fitting lids. I ended up using it to pack my own snack (which Clara helped herself to) when I took her to the playground last week.

Cantaloupe was on sale this week too! So I added some to our lunches a few times during the week….

Just for fun, I focused on turning a hard-boiled egg into a CUTE chick for this lunch. Emily adored it, but it’s not something I plan to do all the time. I have to admit, it was a lot of fun to make it, though!

1. Buy in Bulk — Avoid single-serve convenience packages and opt for bulk items instead. In many cases, buying in bulk is about half the price!

2. Match Coupons with Sales — A great organic coupon site to help with this is Organic Deals and Coupons. Susan does a great job matching sales with coupons and lists lots of sources for printable organic coupons too. I almost always check out the latest listings before heading to the store.

3. Prioritize Organics — Become familiar with the Dirty Dozen list and also the Clean Fifteen. These lists are updated every year, and can help you prioritize organics for foods that contain the most pesticides.

4. A few affordable organics that pack well for lunches: Apples, Carrots, Oranges, Grapes, Hard-boiled Eggs, and Popcorn. I try to incorporate at least one of these in every lunch since they are healthy, inexpensive, and fun to eat!

5. Don’t Waste Food — It sounds simple, but Emily’s lunch is packed with an ice pack mainly to avoid wasting food. Whatever is not eaten at school (usually not much is leftover), is placed back in the lunch tote and she will eat it as soon as she gets home.

That’s it for this week!! Coming up next week….. we’ll share some time-saving tips for packing lunches. Yay!!

Comments

We were given 2 bento boxes and I’ve been hoping for ideas of what to do with them! Thanks! So much fun! And on a sidenote,since discovering your homemade granola bars, I’ve been making them weekly! YUM!!!!

Emily is a good eater. No matter what and how we pack for Anna, most of it comes back home, which is quite frustrating. I like the idea of packing an ice pack – maybe this will reduce her complaints that fruits become “mushy” by the lunchtime.

The blue box is from Target (in the baby section), and the stainless steel box is from http://www.planetbox.com — It’s a high end lunch box, but very well made and I’m hoping it lasts for a very long time. Works really well!!!

the past two years most food would come back to us, but now the school is having recess before lunch and most of the food gets eaten! also, my kids would never eat the egg chick b/c it is “too cute”–seriously, i’ve given up trying to make cute food!

You come up with the cutest and healthiest lunches. My boys are extremely picky eaters, and I’m lucky because my husband usually packs their lunches, but they do get boring. Might have to plan to make several fun lunches to thrown in for a surprise.

Those are some fantastic lunches! It makes all the difference to kids when you can incorporate a lot of fun, colours and different foods to make lunch interesting. Most impressed with the balance of fruits & veggies!

Hi Valerie,
Firstly thanks for the blog. I’ve been following for a while here in Belgium and I always love your ideas.

For the hard boiled egges, I got some egg molds on ebay and they’re super quick and easy, you just shell a hot egg, pop it in the mold and put that into cold water for 10 minutes, hey presto, cute bunnies, chicks, hearts or cars quicker than you can say “bob’s your uncle!”.

I love this idea Valerie, thanks so much for sharing!! My son is always complaining about his lunches and my daughter will be starting Kindergarten in a couple of weeks! I just have to make these lunches for her! It is so hard to let her go!! I wonder, do you make these lunches every day? I wish that I could get three bento boxes on a budget!!

We have just ‘invested’ in two of these planetbox containers and are giving them to our girls as birthday presents (filling them with yummy surprises). They look amazing and I wish I had ordered one for me! Thanks for being the catalyst yet again Valerie. I also bought those hard boiled egg molds from ebay and am looking forward to using them soon.

Hi,
Such a wonderful blog you have! You also have an amazing color sense!! In this post I loved the colored muffin cups, my 6 year old would probably love them. Are these paper? Where can one get them? Thank you so much for the blog, please keep it going!!

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